Fireflies I glimpse them through the trees, like candles in an empty church. Tiny radiant bursts climb upwards, dying as they begin. Is every pinprick flare a cry? An attempt to outshine, if only for a moment? Small souls ascending, embers of lives lost unnoticed in the undergrowth. Snuffed out now, doused by bloated summer rain that pools here in my palms then mingles with the earth.
Tom Millner is a pathologist and poet from London. His poems can also be read in Halfway Down the Stairs (in press), the Hippocrates Prize Anthology 2021 and Between the Lines 2020.